Drones, a security issue
A bill on drones that enter Romania unauthorized is currently under decisional transparency
Leyla Cheamil, 30.10.2024, 14:00
The Romanian Ministry of National Defense has placed under decisional transparency a bill that improves airspace security measures. The bill, which also aims at the possibility of countering drones that enter Romania’s airspace, is to be voted on in the next Parliament session, after the Government has fully drafted it.
Thus, unmanned aircraft, drones that illegally cross the state border of Romania and fly in the national airspace without authorization will be able to be destroyed, neutralized. At the same time, their flight can be taken under control, according to the bill put into decision-making transparency by the Ministry of National Defense. These measures will be ordered in relation to the level of threat within the limits of applicable international law, after taking into account all the specific circumstances of the event and taking into account the priority of protecting people’s lives. The last possible solution applied is the destruction of the unmanned aircraft that uses the national airspace without authorisation.
One or more non-kinetic measures may be taken against unmanned aircraft systems. They entail detecting the drone, taking control or neutralising it by disabling command, control or communications functions. One of the kinetic measures would be to immobilize or destroy the unmanned aircraft. The bill initiated by the Ministry of Defense also establishes the mode of action against piloted aircraft. If the said planes use the airspace of Romania in an unauthorised manner, they are intercepted and, as the case may be, the interceptor planes can fire warning fire and, in the last instance, destruction fire at them.
The bill was initiated in the context in which Romania, which shares a border of about 600 kilometres with Ukraine, has recorded, in the last year, repeated cases in which fragments of Russian drones fell on its territory, during Moscow’s attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure. “The military needs legal provisions in order to exercise in peacetime – Romania not being at war with the Russian Federation – the right not to allow objects that do not declare their identity nor are attributed to a third force to violate our airspace and to produce probable and unwanted material damage both in the area of civilian targets and in the area of targets of public interest”, is the opinion of military analyst Ion Petrescu.
According to the proposed law, the allied systems present in Romania can participate in any action, in accordance with the collective defense treaties to which Romania is a signatory, as a member of NATO and the European Union. In October, Romania’s radar systems detected four separate signals – possibly from drones – that violated the country’s airspace. (MI)
